owensri2

On 12/21/2023 at 11:30 AM, S4GRU said:

It really is impressive what T-Mobile has done.  When S4GRU started in 2011, T-Mobile was the 4th place network in coverage, reputation and performance. Now, look at how far they come. Now the leader in so many ways.

It's something Sprint could have done too.  They could have made the decisions differently from the beginning and followed a similar course.  And now what ever was good about Sprint has been fully leveraged by Tmo and put to much better use. 

I miss Sprint. But really I just miss the potential that was always there. Always excited about what could be tomorrow. That potential has been realized. Just in hues of magenta, instead of yellow. 

Not that it's all been roses since the buyout.  But on the whole, much, much better.

Robert

It's good to be back!  I was blown away at how good T-Mobile service is, even in the rural areas I frequently travel.  Very happy to have dropped Verizon and join Magenta!  😁

Anybody else have this displayed while accessing your data usage in the Sprint Zone App?  Shows I've used 0.03 GB of Data Roaming and have 0 GB remaining.  It used to say "See Terms" in place of the 0 GB.  There is a little red triangle with an exclamation point inside it, which means I've exceeded my allowance, which I know should be 300 MB. (I have the everything data share 1500 plan from 2010)

Are you in this area often?

Yep, I work near there.  There was a new rack going up on a tower in McBee, SC, which is on my way home.  It's about the area where Sprint drops off, and you go to roaming.  I stopped and asked the crew who was adding a site to that tower, and he said it was for T-Mobile!  I was certainly surprised about that.  If T-Mobile is adding sites along that route, I don't see it being long that Sprint would start, given that there are no roaming partners except Verizon out there.  SC-151 is a main route between Charlotte and Myrtle Beach, and I've calculated that they'd only need about 4-5 sites to have uninterrupted coverage.  One can hope!

There is a new site that went up in Darlington, SC just off of US-52 Business where it comes into US-52.  The panels went up a few months ago, and it was just turned on within the past few weeks.  Glad to see it, and hopefully more are to come!

Any idea on when the Rural Alliance will begin?

Regardless of your bars, it means absolutely nothing on your notification bar when you are dealing with LTE Data, just like jeremyvbk mentioned in the thread he quoted.  

 

The signal bars really mean nothing in terms of what your speeds will be. you can have 1 bar and still get 10-20mb downlink speeds, even with a low signal by finding the LTE Strength in debug menu, the same applies.  

 

If you wonder why your data speeds differ so often, you have to think of network traffic, its not just about your personal signal to the tower, its what happens after you connect to the tower and how your data gets routed.

 

Most of your data performance depends on the tower load and the switch its going to.  Load balancing network connections in highly congested peak times will be your biggest issue, luckily with LTE we don't notice it much, anything over 5mb down/up is going to feel the same as a 20mb down/up unless you are downloading a file and staring at your percentage progress.

 

Cable modems and your home internet work the same way essentially... 

If a node supports 100 connections, and you do a speedtest with 99 other people doing heavy data, you may only see a few megabytes.. but if there are only 5 people connected you may see a 25mb download. Load balancing is not the same as throttling, every network does load balancing so everyone with network priority can connect, they will do so at a lower speed until the load lightens.

 

 Throttling you hear about happens depending on your carrier/ rate plan. Sprint postpaid devices get top priority for bandwidth, then prepaid, then roaming agreements with other carriers... If you get a Boost Phone you can get LTE data, but if you go over 1gb ( or whichever plan you are on that states it ) then you will be put at the bottom of the totem pole after the 1gb.  Tmobile/AT&T will throttle you on any unlimited plan, and Sprint will too but ONLY if you are doing extreme excessive data usage.. ( the person that decides to tether to a torrentbox laptop and go through 100+gb a day in bandwidth will probably get throttled and possibly even cancelled, like the people that would abuse roaming back in the day)

Agreed.  However, the OP has to do with why there is a difference between a -104 LTE signal on Verizon compared to a -104 LTE signal on Sprint, not how fast your throughput is at a certain signal level.  The Verizon device will show 3 bars, whereas the Sprint device will show 1 for the same signal strength.  Basically, the "scale" needs adjusted to reflect LTE as opposed to the 1xRTT or EV-DO "scale".  It seem as if they just stuck with the same "values" for the LTE scale as they had for 1x and 3G.

I've been curious as to why a say -104 signal on a Sprint Samsung device only shows 1 bar for LTE (Triband Devices), where as the same -104 on a Verizon device will show 3 bars. Anything -100 and below on a Sprint device is 1 bar. Shouldn't this be corrected? It gives the impression that you have terrible signal when actually you have a pretty good signal. Obviously we here at S4GRU know better, but to the average user it's pretty disconcerting.

If you look at the notification pulldown, it should be right there -- or were you looking for a specific icon that would just say "Sprint"? The next update will show LTE band information in the status bar icon itself if you meant that instead of carrier.

 

 

Glad to hear it! I replied to your e-mail a few minutes ago. Tom didn't have his best game, but he did what he needed to do to win the game and that's all that matters. They have been playing lights out, things are looking good for them once again

 

Beta crew.. check Preferences > Display Settings and go to the very last option, check it off, and see how it works for you.. it still needs some tweaking, but it's pretty cool! More bugfixes will be out later this week. Non-beta users, be patient, you'll get an early Christmas gift from me eventually..

 

-Mike

I mean showing in the status bar at the top "Sprint, Verizon, US Cellular, etc...".  So basically you could just press the power button to look at your phone and it would show which network you are on at the top without having to unlock it or go to the pull down menu. 

Just a suggestion, and I thought this would be a neat feature....

Is there any way we could have the option to have it display the carrier name at the top so you could see at a glace what network you are on without having to go to the app directly? 

Ah that sucks I was going to try that one soon. I was awesome on my gn2

 

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

Yeah, I know...ugh lol.  The 56014 works just fine, 3G roaming and such, but when on 1x800, it shows that my phone is roaming.  If I recall, Digi set it that way on purpose.  I just need to find one that doesn't show roaming while on 1x800 that the phone will accept.

My GN4 seems to like 1x800 as well. I'm on it almost all the time according to signal check. I've not had any voice issues at all. I've even been connecting to HD voice about half the time to known Sprint subscribers with HD voice compatible devices. It could be an issue with your phone or the local towers.

 

Sent from my Note 4.

I always have HD if I talk to someone with a capable device.  I've had good results with the HD every time.  I wonder if it could be my device.  Hopefully not and it's just a network issue.  We shall see.

I have 513 from digiblur that worked awesome on gn2 in this market? If you want to try it pm me your email.

 

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

Thanks for the offer, I have that one already.  I tried to flash it, but the phone remains on 55021.  If I flash 56014, it takes it just fine.

How are you changing prls?

 

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

By using the method described a few pages back in this thread, with DFS.

After having the Note 4 for almost a month, and experiencing all 3 bands of LTE, Roaming, and Native service 1x and 1x800, here are a few things I notice:

- This phone likes to hang onto smoke signals when roaming.  For instance, my drive to work consists of roaming on Verizon, then US Cellular.  For some reason, it likes to hang onto US Cellular (makes sense PRL wise since US Cellular is on a higher priority than Verizon), however, the US Cellular signal is unusable.  The signal strength is usually -105 dbm at this point, and the Ec/Io is between -20 and -30, way beyond the usable range.  I have to cycle airplane mode to get it to switch to Verizon.

- Another issue I have is voice quality is worse on this device compared to my Note II.  This is especially noticeable on 1x800.  The signal will be all over the place, and I drop calls more often. 

- The battery life is excellent, and a good step above my Note II. 

Also, which PRL would be good to use for this device?  I tried flashing a few, but it won't take any of the 65xxx PRL's.  I'm currently using 56014, as that is the only one that the phone will accept.  Any ideas?

Overall, it's an awesome device, but the annoyances with hanging on a unusable signal and terrible 1x800 call quality are degrading my experience with the device.  Hopefully this can be corrected with later software updates. 

The Band 26 I've experienced has been really erratic.  It never holds, just goes back and forth between Band 25 and 26.  Even if Band 25 is weak.

I pre ordered mine at Best Buy this past Monday. Went to pick it up yesterday evening, and they didn't have it. Was told that it would be there Friday (10-17). Very disappointed. They have no idea when it'll arrive. If it wasn't for the $200 off, I'd cancel this and go directly to Sprint.

I'm still waiting for most of the towers in Florence, SC to start broadcasting LTE.  All of the towers around the outskirts and beyond are pretty much online.  However, most, if not all of the sites in the Florence city limits are still only 3G accepted.  You'd think it'd be the opposite way.  Unfortunately, I've been getting those dreaded 0.05 Mbps download speeds again while at work there.  Seems like it got better for a while, then went down in the dumps again for some odd reason.  Oh well, It'll be great when they do come online!    

The ##72786# did the trick!  Thanks!

Just for laughs, shut down roaming and move to a different tower. Then try a cold reboot of the phone.

 

A tower that has been reset may be sending a bogus ECSFB signal while it reinitializes. If a tower like this can be seen by a phone it can cause these sort of symptoms until the tower comes back online.

 

Sent from my SPH-L720T using Tapatalk

Just to clarify, what is a "cold boot"?

I've got someone that has an issue with the S4 suddenly not connecting to LTE.  Worked from February to just a few days ago, and bam, no LTE connection.  The SignalCheck app indicates it's connected to LTE, but it says "Mobile Data: Unregistered".  Also, where it says "Provider" for the LTE connection, it says "Unknown (3100), whereas mine says "Sprint (310120). 

Any ideas?  Tried updating profile and PRL, and LTE does come up and the Spark wheel spins when it updates, but then after the update, it disappears again....

I'm stumped...

Happy Birthday Robert!!! 

Is it $50 off or they giving a $50 gift card?

 

Some stores give customers gift cards :/

It could be a gift card.  I just saw it advertised on Facebook.

Radio Shack has it for $149.99.  They are giving you an extra $50 for pre-orders...

Agreed.. I don't think I have ever seen a Truck or van marked with Sprint. Would be cool to see one day. 

I saw a Ford Fusion with Sprint logos on the doors in Hartsville, SC driving around about a year back.  Wonder who that may have been...

Yeah, I'm so excited that while at work in Florence, Darlington, or Hartsville I now have LTE!  Did lots of mapping around Hartsville and Darlington recently.  Gonna try to do more this upcoming week.